For innovation to take place within the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation, physiatrists must become intimately connected with experts inside and outside the field. For me, working with experts in other fields is exciting and beneficial because it cultivates new ideas and approaches to help patients.

A recent success for the Johns Hopkins Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation came from collaborating with the Johns Hopkins Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Sheikh Khalifa Stroke Institute. This institute provides a model of care for stroke patients in which rehabilitation specialists team up with neurologists as soon as a patient is admitted to the hospital for a stroke. Within a day of having the stroke, patients start rehabilitation and receive up to six therapy sessions per day.

Another example of successful teamwork is on the research side: A current study is examining new technology that enables people to control prosthetic limbs with their thoughts. In collaboration with neurosurgeons, neurologists and engineers, we implant electrodes on both sides of the brain to give people with quadriplegia some “mind control” of motorized prosthetic arms. There were several poster presentations on this work at the Society for Neuroscience conference in October 2019.

Whether they are research or clinical practices, these innovations wouldn’t be possible without collaboration among experts from many specialties. We all share the same common goal of helping people get better, so why not do it together?

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